January 20, 2006
Porridge, Pulleys, and Pi
Ed Keppelmann, in the MAA Mini Focus, Jan 2006, pg 3
After the film, director paul Csicsery fielded questions. Delighting the audience with his deep admiration of mathematicians and their fulfilling intellectual journeys, he observed that mathematicians are the only group he knows in which the answer "I don't know" is met with excitement and motivation rather than irritation.
I guess this is becoming "The Emerson blog"
Here's the main point of Emerson's Compensation essay:
* * *
A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, or against his will, he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon hurled at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat.
You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would make things of all persons; of women, of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, "I will get it from his purse or get it from his skin," is sound philosophy.
All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or good for me that is not good for him, my neighbour feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me.
* * *
This essay fails but what a magnificent failure. He was really swinging for the fences.
Yea, verily, a fine essay
I'm just rereading Compensation for the upteenth time. What a fantastic essay.
* * *
The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and admires and covets? -- he must cast behind him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a byword and a hissing...
Vortex Emerson, reprise
I just noticed that Compensation is not on the reading list.
I like that Emerson Essay quite a bit. Excerpt:
* * *
I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed, that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon.
Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day, --bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, -- `We are to have _such_ a good time as the sinners have now'; -- or, to push it to its extreme import, -- `You sin now; we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow.'
The fallacy lay in the immense concession, that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood...[read more at the link above...]
Charles Mingus on my iPod nano
Better Git it in Your Soul
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
Boogie Stop Shuffle
Fable of Faubus
Pussy Cat Dues
Pedal Point Blues
Girl of My Dreams
[ I guess these are all from Mingus Ah Um. Note to self: must add more Mingus to the "Library." It's such a pain in the ass to put a CD into the laptop and copy the files into iTunes. ]
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